This invention relates generally to an ink-on-demand ink jet printing head of the type used to produce characters on a print recording medium and more particularly to an ink jet head which is highly integrated to provide a large plurality of closely spaced dots. Ink jet printing has attracted wide attention because normal paper can be used for printing thereon. Printing speed is sufficiently high with an ink jet printer and the energy consumption for printing is small. Particularly, construction of an entire printing device is simplified and energy consumption for printing is small in an ink-on-demand type ink jet printer wherein the ink is ejected only as it is required to form a marking, e.g., a dot on the print recording medium.
However, printing speed is usually low and only a few jets are provided in a print head. Therefore, highly integrated heads made by combining a plurality of nozzles have been proposed and some of these devices have been put into practical application. However, the conventional ink jet head can include approximately seven to seventeen nozzles at best. Thus, print quality suffers and there has been no printer of this type having printing characteristics which are comparable to the quality produced by using a solid font. Also, the integrated ink jet heads of the prior art tend to be large in size and complicated in construction.
What is needed is an ink jet printing head which provides a large plurality of ink jets and is highly integrated such that size is small and complexity is low.